More than a decade after Patrick Read Johnson started shooting 5-25-77, his Star Wars-centric coming-of-age drama, he’s finally done. The director has confirmed in a recent interview that the movie is ready to go, and will be released later this year.

John Francis Daley leads 5-25-77 as a young film geek whose life is changed by a little movie called Star Wars. Work-in-progress cuts of 5-25-77 have been screened before, notably at Star Wars Celebration in 2007 and TIFF in 2013, but money troubles kept it from completion until now. Read about Johnson’s plans for a 5-25-77 release after the jump. Read More »

Patrick Read Johnson is making a film called 5-25-77 that follows a group of kids on Star Wars‘ opening night. The picture is close to the finish line, but Johnson needs more money to finish it. To raise that money he’s doing an unusual road show, presenting the cut as it currently stands at movie- and geek-friendly locations like Devil’s Tower, in the hopes of finding new fans and donors.

Because this is 2012, the journey is being chronicled, and that chronicle is becoming a parallel film, Hearts of Dorkness. The trailer for that, which is also a pitch for Johnson’s primary effort, is below, and worth a look. Read More »

A long time ago, on an Internet that seems far far away, two Star Wars themed films were looking at major releases. There was Kyle Newman’s Fanboys and Patrick Read Johnson‘s 5-25-77. The former was centered on the excitement looking ahead to the prequels and the latter was about how the release of the original movie shapes a young man’s Hollywood dreams. Fanboys came and went in 2009 but 5-25-77 lingered like a piece of space junk released from a Star Destroyer. That year it screened at a film festival but that was more or less the last we heard of it after several years of teases.

That all changed this weekend when Jeff Sneider of Variety sent out a tweet saying the film will be released this summer and the filmmaker responded. The saga continues after the jump. Read More »

Now you might be saying: “I don’t really need to watch a 25 minute video review of Baby’s Day Out.” Out of all the movies in the history of cinema, I’m not sure what compelled them to pick this John Hughes-penned family comedy. And while on the surface it might seem like a movie like Baby’s Day Out would be easy to rip apart, Red Letter Media does it in a well-researched yet humorous approach, offering insights and laughs you never thought you’d get from such a review/dissection.

Before Fanboys was ever announced, there was another Star Wars-themed project in the works, an indie coming of age drama titled 5-25-77 from Patrick Read Johnson (director of Angus, writer of Dragonheart). Many geeks will reccognize that date as the day that Star Wars was released in theaters. The movie went into production in 2004, and has sat in post production for nearly five years. The film premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October of last year under a new minimalistic title, ’77.

The film tells the story of an alienated, sci-fi obsessed teen filmmaker named Pat Johnson (John Francis Daley) who must overcome his fear of leaving everything he knows and loves behind to chase his unlikely Hollywood dream. The pending release of a new movie called Star Wars on 5-27-77 is instrumental in shaping Pat’s destiny.

If Fanboys was American Pie, this movie seems much more like Almost Famous. ’77 looks like it has a lot of potential. I’m a sci-fi geek, a recovering aspiring filmmaker and a sucker for good coming of age indie, so I’m sure I’ll have no problem connecting with this film. ’77 doesn’t have a distributor yet, but it does have a new movie trailer. Check it out after the jump.

Patrick Read Johnson has found financing to complete post production on his autobiographical indie “77,” (formerly titled 5/25/77) which chronicles the director’s journeys in Hollywood with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. [THR]

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FestivalCentral asks people at Cannes how to pronounce the title of Charlie Kaufman‘s directorial debut Synecdoche, New York. Jeff Wells reports that Kaufman says the pronunciation is “Syn-ECK-duh-kee.”

Blogwarts has yet another new (but way too small) photo from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Twentieth Century Fox paid $550,000 to the Smithsonian Institution for the right to use its name in Night at the Museum 2: Escape From the Smithsonian. [sci-fi]

Fangoria reports that actor Glenn Morshower is set to return to Transformers 2. Morshower is best known for playing a secret service agent in 24, and appeared in the original movie as a military Sargent at the US Soccent.